On the challenge of formulating good, engaging questions

2017-09-11

A common mistake, e.g. in off-sites and workshops, is to present generic questions for which the answer is self-evident or can’t become very specific and useful. Another mistake is not to make the question(s) relevant and personal. Examples of such questions are ”-How can we become more customer focused?” or ”-How can we work better as a team?”.

The ’trick’ is to contextualise any leadership-question. For example; ”- In service-group X we have invested a lot of money of effort to get better customer feedback. Yet, this service is still getting weaker customer feedback than in service-group Y in which we have invested nothin! I’ve tried to figure out why this is the case? What could we do differently to be more focused on the customer?” As a result of the contextualisation, we have a real question people will recognise. What’s more, as you state that the question is engaging you personally, you will inspire your team members on an emotional level to engage their minds to find an answer.